Saturday, March 24, 2012

Seed Fruit

The prairies have been filled
and that year the spring grass
was being pulled, dominated
and replaced with a too-green, carpet facade

Nevermore the prariedogs rise
but rather the suburbanites
reaching for hot mugs of the fruit of your family's labor

I was conceived that year
When autumn descended into black, starless nights
the earth was still in mourning after receiving you so violently
and violently the misanthropes misbehaved giving a peace offering to their
violent god that sits enthroned behind the vinyl siding in every
passive cul-de-sac

Were the faces of the ravens the same as those of the cardinals?
They were confused, weren't they, father?
They didn't know what fruit a dead seed could produce

Thursday, November 17, 2011

A Long Papyrus Bridge

Father
I like to read your letters
written on something like
what I use to roll around
a filter and loose leaf cut
of choice homegrown to
bacco before I set fire to one end and suck as a straw 
and blow out of my nose, thick clouds of white smoke
but were they gray when Rome was burning?
I can remember you
saying something about
his mother and I can
remember you looking
into my soul
Father

did I know you?
before? because
you have built a
long papyrus
bridge that
stretches all the way out from your little Mediterranean island across a faithless Atlantic

and
a couple thousand years

and your ink mixes with the blood in my veins
what color does the combination of red and
black make? does it swirl as it would in a
syringe? because your words are the
wings of a dove and a black crow,
too and we caught them plotting
murder like a board-game of
Clue we know who tied the
noose and they put us
down dear father like
a lethal injection they
grind on those same veins that I mentioned before, they twist the same chest cavity that you once smoothed  dear father and the 3:19 a.m. no longer feels ok because we are dining on our own ashes here - at least, I am - and you kept trying to tell us, you kept saying those same words over and over - you said, "Get it son.  Catch this and run with it." in that voice so familiar it sounded like a neighbor

no,
better:
a savior

your ink cleanses the bloodstream

do you understand that father?
I pray to you
and I won't apologize for it
and I'll pray to every saint in the library before I go back to the church where they told me not to


Tuesday, February 23, 2010


There is a place for it
and it is an empty side
walk on an empty side
street with no cars or

foot traffic rumbling by
but no hay bails either
just a couple of drops
of water falling from a

now grey sky

hmm... concrete and glass
seem so cold but why are
we so at home in them
and why are we not awake

yet?



-JM 2010

Friday, April 11, 2008

Proffessor Daly, at University of Illinois Chicago writes:
"I guess also teaching western civ has forced me to think also about what poets are about: they are hypersensitive individuals who sense trends and moods in society that the rest of us can only vaguely experience. They also interpret and articulate for us what it's like to be human."

This is a treasure.


-JM